Forgotten histories: Recovering the precarious lives of African servants in Imperial Germany AITKEN, Robert <http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3332-3063> Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26141/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version AITKEN, Robert (2019). Forgotten histories: Recovering the precarious lives of African servants in Imperial Germany. In: GARRIDO, Felipe Espinoza, KOEGLER, Caroline, NYANGULU, Deborah and STEIN, Mark U, (eds.) Locating African European Studies: Interventions—Intersections—Coalitions. Routledge. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk 9 Forgotten histories Recovering the precarious lives of African servants in Imperial Germany Robbie Aitken Buried in the Wöchentliche Anzeigen, an official bulletin-cum-newspaper for the principality of Ratzeburg in northern Germany, a one-sentence article brought readers’ attention to the presence of a Cameroonian servant in the small, southern Alpine resort of Oberstdorf, Bavaria ([No title] 1888, 5). The man, readers of the 10th July 1888 publication were told, was part of the entourage of the sister of Freiherr Julius von Soden, governor of Cameroon, “our colony over there” (5). Despite its brevity, the article is of interest for multiple reasons. Not only does it provide evidence of a growing Black population in Imperial Germany, but it, and many others like it, demonstrates growing interest, media, and public awareness of such Black visitors (see, e.g., “Steglitz” 1885, 4; “Aus Stadt” 1888, 3; “Todesanzeige” 1890, n.p.; “Dunkle Existenzen” 1902, 40). The article also highlights the link that was frequently made between German colonial expansion in Africa and this increasing Black presence. The Cameroonian servant was one of several thousand Black men, women, and children to spend time in Germany pre-1914, drawn there by the intertwined processes of globalisation and the widening reach of European imperialism. As we will see, many, but far from all, of these individuals did indeed come from Germany’s newly acquired African colonies of Cameroon, Togo, German East Africa (GEA, parts of present-day Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda), and German South West Africa (GSWA, present-day Namibia). Research into the historical presence of African Diaspora(s) in Europe has tended to be dominated by studies of Black men and women in both Britain and France. Yet since the 1980s, historians and activists have made great strides in trying to recover aspects of the forgotten history of Africans in Germany. Ground-breaking work by the likes of Katharina Oguntoye (1997) and Paulette Reed-Anderson (1995), among others (Martin and Alonzo 2004; Bechhaus-Gerst 2007; van der Heyden 2008; Aitken and Rosenhaft 2013), has demonstrated the longer roots of Germany’s Black presence as well as the active role Black people have played in German history. Such work has been influential in establishing German-speaking Europe as an important site of investigation within the burgeoning field of African European studies. Similar to much of the scholarly work on Africans in Europe in general, these studies have taken a largely biographical approach. This has resulted in a number of important case studies of relatively well-documented lives, primarily of individuals who spent a prolonged period of time in Germany. But, comparable to the majority of cases in Europe before 1914, such individuals were the exception: a plurality of Black visitors did not remain for extended stays. Instead, the fate of this shifting, highly transient population was dictated by the restrictive policies of authorities both in Berlin and in the German colonial territories as well as by the limited grounds for migration that brought Africans to Germany. Often arriving as servants, sailors, or participants in human zoos, their time in Germany was fleeting, and as a consequence, they have left few traces in the existing archival record. The article in the Wöchentliche Anzeigen, therefore, also serves as an example of the challenges that researchers working on the historical presence of Africans in Europe face. How can details of the lives of the more obscure and elusive visitors be recovered? Aside from reporting his visit, the article does not mention even the most basic information about the Cameroonian man—his name, age, the duration of his stay—let alone provide any real sense of his experience of Germany. Nonetheless, were it not for the article’s existence, he would be one of many Black visitors to Europe whose presence both individually and collectively remains forgotten and beyond retrieval. The recent digitisation of a wealth of German-language primary materials like local and regional newspapers, as well as memoirs from European colonists and passenger lists from the port of Hamburg, opens up new opportunities to prevent the records of such visitors from being lost. In turn, this can help add empirical breadth and depth to our knowledge about the Black presence in Germany.1 Indeed, combining the few clues from the Wöchentliche Anzeigen with information from a further contemporary newspaper report in the Hamburger Nachrichten (“Ein unvermuthetes Wiedersehen” 1888, 4), it is possible to identify the young Cameroonian as Ndumbe Elokan. Elokan and his brother, Ndine Ndumbe, both spent time in Germany, Elokan with one of von Soden’s sisters in Wiesbaden and Ndine Ndumbe in Langenau. Employing some of these materials as a starting point for collecting further information, this chapter takes the form of a case study of Black visitors who, like Elokan, entered Germany as personal servants. Personal service was statistically one of the most important migration routes bringing Africans to Germany, as at least a quarter of all African visitors to Germany likely arrived in the service of a European master.2 Personal servants were also the most transitory group of African visitors; therefore, they have remained almost entirely neglected in the existing secondary literature on Africans in Europe. In this chapter, the focus is on sub-Saharan Africans, 277 of whom have been identified as arriving in Germany as personal servants between 1884, the onset of German colonialism, and 1914, the outbreak of World War I. The chapter provides empirical detail about the composition of this group while also focussing on moments when the lives of personal servants became particularly visible. These were often moments of crisis in the servant/master relationship that caused short-term visits to be prolonged, such as when servants broke from their masters or when they were abandoned to their own fates. Such crisis points brought their cases to the attention of colonial and welfare institutions as well as local newspapers and helped shape the views of German authorities regarding Black migration from the colonies. Personal servants What did it mean to be a personal servant and why, in an environment underpinned by racial exploitation and violence, would Africans willingly become servants? In Germany’s African empire, personal servants were variously referred to as “Boy”, “Hausbursche”, or “Diener”, and of all the Africans in the entourage of European colonists, they were closest to their white employers (Fabian 2000, 31). Servants were expected to carry out a wide variety of jobs. These could include basic menial tasks such as routine household chores, cooking, cleaning, and the carrying of their master’s equipment, but they could also include providing essential medical care and treatment for sick Europeans. Additionally, duties could extend to encompass tasks offering the potential of exerting a more active influence on the relationship between the colonisers and the subjugated. Trusted servants could function as interpreters or even be trained to serve as colonial soldiers (for a case study, see Zeller and Michels 2008, 128–34). There were several reasons as to why Africans willingly became servants. Foremost among these were opportunity and remuneration. In the colonial setting, working in the service of a white European was an increasingly in-demand form of employment which was relatively well paid. In Cameroon in the early 1900s, a servant could earn the equivalent of upwards of 18 Marks per week, while in GEA it could be up to 19 Marks (Ziemann 1907, 85; Morlang 2008, 85). Food and clothing might also be provided. Though considerably less than an African cook or solider might earn, the amount was more than a porter or a plantation worker would receive. In comparison, it is estimated that German industrial workers of 1913 earned around 25 Marks per week (Bry 1960, 51). The German doctor Adolf Heilborn (1912, 15–16), who toured the German colonies, argued that some local populations he encountered, such as young Waswahili men in GEA, actively looked for employment as servants, while the Wasaramo believed working for European colonists was more lucrative and far less physically demanding than trying to eke out a living from arable farming. Not all Africans who became servants did so voluntarily. Johannes Fabian (2000, 30) has argued that European explorers in Central Africa often acquired their personal servants as slaves, set free from African or Arab slave traders in order to serve white Europeans. Such a fate awaited a number of Africans who came to Germany, including Hanna Ametoche. Ametoche, likely from Ghana, was a former slave before she became attached to the North German Mission in Keta. She later accompanied Maria Tolch, wife of the missionary Heinrich Beck, to Germany as the former’s servant (“Was aus” 1908, 57–61; Passenger List [PL], Hamburg – West Africa, 13 October 1899, A 1 Band 105). In some cases, it appears that members of local elites strategically handed over sons to the service of Europeans in order to cement relationships and to enhance their own influence within the colonial power structure.